Peggy, Milly and Sidney come to visit

Peggy is a boxer

Peggy is a lump

when she's pleased to see you

she wags her little stump

~

Milly is a beauty
Milly is a dream
she'll jump in any water
the sea, a lake, a stream

~

Sidney is a tearaway
a feisty little chap
but you can wrap him in a blanket
and sit him on your lap

~

When they came to visit us
we had fun every day
and what was even better was
they came with G and A

~

Altogether, human and canine, the best house guests ever. I haven't seen G, he of the Gallé cat and the luminous landscape paintings, for well over twenty years, and his partner A never before, and Tom didn't know them at all, but they and their three darlings breezed into our lives with all the ease and good cheer one could hope for, bringing energy and hilarity and enormous quantities of food, we scarcely had to shop or cook at all (except that they won Tom over even more by asking him to cook them the curried mussels a second time in a week because they liked it so much), and we won't have to much for some time to come, since as well as the cold-bags of quality sausages, sacks of hard-to-get split peas and lentils, cartons of cream crackers, jars of lemon curd and sundry other things which they brought with them, and the supplies they bought here, they also made quadruple quantities of sumptuous stews, fish pies, cassoulets etc with which they filled any remaining gaps in the freezer. And there was equal generosity of laughter, conversation, reminiscing and storytelling, confidences and chitchat and generally a sense of filling in of the gaps in ways which I feel sure has done me, at least, a deep good.

They did in fact rent a gite nearby for a week out of the time they were here, concerned, of all things, that we might find the dogs too much. As if. But the gite was so horrible that they only stayed there three nights and then we prevailed on them to come back here, and we continued to eat like kings and enjoy the dogs. Peggy, Milly and Sidney are all rescue dogs, who all had difficult starts in life - Peggy, though she is already ten, only came to them two years ago and had never lived indoors before, Sidney was re-homed several times and said to be out of control. Despite their very comfortable life style, bespoke buffalo- and elk-hide collars and handmade silver medallions each with its own semi-precious cabochon setting (A's brother does silversmithing for a hobby and made them for them), they are still quite a harum-scarum pack, proper dogs. There is a sometimes a degree of tension between Sidney and Peggy, always initiated by him, she is a gentle giant but would probably make a reasonable job of squashing the life out of him if provoked beyond endurance. She in turn, though loyal and loving at home, will sometimes simply let her legs carry her off, forgetful of all else, at the risk getting lost, so she can't be off the lead too much. The beach scenes above were in fact the idyllic prelude to such episodes of fight and flight. Even Milly, who is sweetness itself, once out in a watery place especially, becomes completely absorbed and rather indifferent to any other presence, so I wasn't inclined to take them to the water mill, having horrible visions of the fast flowing river and the mill race, though G and A don't seem to worry too much, trusting her as a strong swimmer and sensible. But for all their challenges, they are marvellous dogs, because they belong to marvellous people, who have applied the same steady, patient, compassionate, robust and humorous goodness and love that they show and give in abundance in every part of their life together. 

The dogs of course return it, as well as supplying the material for an endlessly unfolding, very creative and imaginative, narrative and drama; Sidney (also known as Kidney and Pig-meat, and any other appropriate assonance) in particular is the object of many a lurid fantasy: being carried off by a buzzard while walking in the countryside, snatched by a killer whale while walking on the beach, wrapped in banana leaves and barbecued... Happily none of these things happened to him while he was here, neither were our threats to kidnap any or all of them carried out, since we could see they didn't really want to live with anyone else, and men and dogs all made their long way safely back through the winter roads up to Cherbourg, over the sea and home to South Wales, leaving us filled with good things.

 Goodbye for now, dears.

~

(There's a web album with even more photos of them, though many of them are nearly identical I couldn't leave any out)